Like many other readers, I always look forward to new titles from my favourite authors. This fall my holds lists runneth over with some new hot mystery titles.
I have loved Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone mysteries from day one. I started with A is for Alibi and I’ve been hooked since. Fans have seen Kinsey through explosions in her apartment, failed relationships, and too many close calls to count. The latest installment is V is for Vengeance (M). The only regret I have with this wonderful series is that there are only four letters left in the alphabet.
“V is for Vengeance: V may stand for vengeance, but think V for Vegas, too that’s where the latest in Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone series begins. It’s there, in 1986, that 23-year-old Phillip Lanahan runs afoul of Santa Teresa Mob boss Lorenzo Dante and finds himself spinning off a multilevel parking structure to an unpleasant end. V is also for Vance, shoplifter Audrey Vance. To meet her, fast-forward two years. Eagle-eyed Millhone spots her lifting silk PJ’s in Nordstrom’s and turns her in. Later, Kinsey is surprised when the woman is found dead at the bottom of a ravine, and even more surprised when the woman’s fiancé hires Kinsey to prove Audrey didn’t commit suicide and wasn’t, as Kinsey suspects, part of an organized ring of shoplifters, or pickers.” – Booklist
The latest in Patricia Cornwell’s highly successful and suspenseful Kay Scarpetta series is due out later in November. Her books are gripping and graphic but not for the faint of heart. Just what I love!
Red Mist (M): “Determined to find out what happened to her former deputy chief, Jack Fielding, murdered six months earlier, Kay Scarpetta travels to the Georgia Prison for Women, where an inmate has information not only on Fielding, but also on a string of grisly killings. The murder of Atlanta family years ago, a young woman on death row, and the inexplicable deaths of homeless people as far away as California seem unrelated. But Scarpetta discovers connections that compel her to conclude that what she thought ended with Fielding’s death and an attempt on her own life is only the beginning of something far more destructive: a terrifying terrain of conspiracy and potential terrorism on an international scale. And she is the only one who can stop it.” – HPL catalogue
Michael Connelly is back with another novel featuring his LAPD Detective Harry Bosch. He is set to retire in three years so Bosch is looking for big cases. Could this mean Connelly might be moving on from Bosch? His fans certainly hope not!
The Drop (M): “Harry Bosch has been given three years before he must retire from the LAPD, and he wants cases more fiercely than ever. In one morning, he gets two. DNA from a 1989 rape and murder matches a 29-year-old convicted rapist. Was he an eight-year-old killer or has something gone terribly wrong in the new Regional Crime Lab? The latter possibility could compromise all of the lab’s DNA cases currently in court. Then Bosch and his partner are called to a death scene fraught with internal politics. Councilman Irvin Irving’s son jumped or was pushed from a window at the Chateau Marmont. Irving, Bosch’s longtime nemesis, has demanded that Harry handle the investigation. Relentlessly pursuing both cases, Bosch makes two chilling discoveries: a killer operating unknown in the city for as many as three decades, and a political conspiracy that goes back into the dark history of the police department.” – HPL catalogue
For those who like things on the lighter side, Janet Evanovich is back this fall with Explosive Eighteen (M). Just a few months after fans devoured Smokin’ Seventeen she is back with another installment in her bestselling Stephanie Plum series. This is one of the few series that can still make me laugh out loud.
“Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum’s life is set to blow sky high when international murder hits dangerously close to home. Before Stephanie can even step foot off Flight 127 Hawaii to Newark, she’s knee deep in trouble. Her dream vacation turned into a nightmare, and she’s flying back to New Jersey solo. Worse still, her seatmate never returned to the plane after the L.A. layover. Now he’s dead, in a garbage can, waiting for curbside pickup. His killer could be anyone. And a ragtag collection of thugs and psychos, not to mention the FBI, are all looking for a photograph the dead man was supposed to be carrying. Only one other person has seen the missing photo-Stephanie Plum. Now she’s the target, and she doesn’t intend to end up in a garbage can.” – HPL catalogue
I would be totally remiss if I didn’t mention a local mystery as well. Anne Emery is back with another installment in her Monty Collins and Father Brennan Burke series Death At Christy Burke’s (M). This popular series has won Emery numerous awards including the silver medal in the 2011 Independent Publisher Book Awards, and the 2011 Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction – Children in the Morning.
“When spray-painted graffiti appears on the wall of Christy Burke’s pub indicating that there’s a killer on the premises, his grandson, Father Brennan Burke, is asked to investigate the vandalism. Though not at all keen on probing into the lives of the bar’s clientele, he has little choice once a body is found on the property. Issuing orders from a cell in Mountjoy Prison, the pub’s current owner wants the problem solved without the police anywhere near his building. Assisted by his pal Monty Collins and fellow priest Michael O’Flaherty, Brennan begins to uncover dark secrets worth killing for in the lives of the pub regulars.
In addition to the events surrounding the pub, Brennan’s murder investigation becomes overshadowed by ominous events in Belfast that may soon come home to roost in Dublin. Sinister figures are spotted in and around the pub, people are being followed in the street, and Brennan comes to possess explosive information that he cannot reveal to security forces. The situation compels him to take a hard look at Irish history and his family’s place in it, and he can’t shake the feeling that an act of violence in Northern Ireland is about to be avenged soon—and very close to home.” – Publisher
Are there any mysteries you’re looking forward to? Let us know!
Louise
Source: http://www.thereader.ca/2011/11/new-fall-mysteries.html
